Eric John Ross

Eric John Ross was professor of endocrinology at University College Hospital (UCH), London. He was born in Alford, Lincolnshire. His father, Lawrence Buttle Stephenson Ross, was a civil servant. His mother was Alice Ross née Coombs. He was educated at Alford Preparatory School and then Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Alford.

During the Second World War he served in the Middlesex Regiment, the Intelligence Corps and the RAMC between 1940 to 1946.

Following his demobilisation, he decided to qualify as a doctor and was accepted at University College Medical School. He qualified in 1951, in his mid thirties. In 1952 he was a house physician at UCH and a resident medical officer at St Pancras Hospital. From 1954 to 1959, he was a lecturer and then a senior lecturer in medicine at University College Hospital Medical School. From 1955 he spent a year as a Lilly travelling fellow and research associate in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In 1960 he became a first assistant on the medical unit and an honorary consultant physician at UCH. He later became director of the metabolism unit at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He was subsequently appointed as professor of endocrinology back at UCH.

He wrote papers on aldosterone, the permeability of the blood-aqueous barrier and the mechanism of action of insulin and aldosterone and adrenal and renal disease.

At the time of his election to the fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians in 1966 he listed gardening, travelling and violin music as his interests.

In 1941 he married Doreen Emily Coleman, the daughter of a civil servant. They had three daughters. He later married Janice Alberta Ross.